Impact of the Strategic Hamlet Program on a village

The
first question is how you managed to organize the ethnic minority
peoples to participate in the revolution.

Y True Nie:

When the Ngo Dinh Diem and the
American authorities were here they controlled the population so tightly
that the inhabitants in this area could not go anywhere at all. In order
to go somewhere, one had to obtain special papers. And it was very
difficult to obtain them.

Therefore, the living
conditions of the people became ever worsened day by day. For all these
reasons, the people did not want to have the strategic hamlets around.

592 Take 1 Clapstick

Interviewer:

Please tell us from the beginning. For example, how they forced you to
dress, how you could not go out of the hamlet, how you would be punished
if you took a bath and so on.

Y True Nie:

During the Diem period it was
difficult to go outside of the strategic hamlets. He forbade people to
travel about. In order to go from one place to another people had to
obtain special papers. For this reason it was difficult for people to go
about to do their work.

When people took a bath or a
shower, they had to wear clothes. People just could not go
skinny-dipping. And in wearing the loincloth, people were required to
put on a double loincloth otherwise they would be fined from five to ten
dong each.

Interviewer:

Cut.

Interviewer:

Please go on.

Y True Nie:

There had been no strategic
hamlet in this area before. After they established the strategic
hamlets, they handed out guns to the young men. In 1962 they distributed the guns and had the strategic hamlets
constructed.

Each person who was given a gun had to put up two
layers of fences, each ten meters in length. The population had to
supply all the materials for the construction of the strategic hamlets.
The regime did not give them anything at all.

By 1965 – on November 10, 1965 – the
puppet used tanks and drove the population of the twelve villages into
this strategic hamlet in order to control them. The regime was afraid
that if they allowed the people to remain in their own villages then
they would have contacts with the revolution, so they forced everybody
into this strategic hamlet.